


Perdidit Amor

by desperationandgin



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-30
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-04 09:23:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3062507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/desperationandgin/pseuds/desperationandgin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina dreams, and when she does, she dreams of Cora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perdidit Amor

**Author's Note:**

> I received an anonymous prompt on tumblr asking for a fic where Cora tells Regina she's proud of her and loves her. I actually got it during the summer hiatus, but coming up with something was a little difficult. The prompter also asked for something not Outlaw Queen related but, well. The show went where the show went, and so did this fic.

Her mother’s voice invades her dreams during the moments Regina feels safe, during the times when her mind allows her to feel free for even a small period of time. In those moments she is with Robin again, barefoot and making her way through a meadow. He’s waiting for her, all dimples and blue eyes and she’s young with hair falling down her shoulders, her own smile making her heart feel light. Sometimes she makes it to him and her dreams are intimate, making her ache for the real thing, for him to be wrapped around her when she wakes.

But there are times Cora gets to him before Regina can, and it’s Daniel all over again. Robin’s heart doesn’t glow with enchantment; it drips blood, and it runs dark and thick down her mother’s arm as she squeezes. Her mother laughs, Regina screams, and when she wakes it’s because Henry is there, shaking her shoulders and trying to soothe her the way she used to reassure him when he thought there were monsters in his closet.

Tonight though, tonight her dream starts as nothing. Just black and quiet and still and even her subconscious mind is grateful. It doesn’t last long. There’s a flickering in her peripheral vision, a light just off in the distance, blue and ethereal. Regina follows, now walking through her own house, past Henry’s room and up, up, up toward the attic. She hasn’t been down this hallway since the botched plan to speak with Cora civilly; the night her young mother decided that even dead she wanted nothing to do with the child she’d decided to keep. Regina knows she’s dreaming; it’s a surreal feeling to be so self-aware while unconscious, and she stops in front of a closed door that she only has to push to open.

There’s a figure, cloaked and with her back turned. It’s corporeal, not wispy, and Regina’s voice finally speaks after a minute passes by. “Mother?”

The figure turns and Cora is there, and for a moment she’s harsh lines and a drawn tight face, stern as ever. But then it relaxes into something else entirely, one hand moving over her chest and in that moment, Regina knows in this dream, her mother has her heart.

“My dear love.”

It’s years too late. It’s too late, _it’s too late_ for Regina to be pulled in by this, to feel anything other than anger and loss over the woman who gave her to the king, to a man she’d planned to marry herself but failed to do. It’s too late for those three words to work. She’s telling herself this, over and over again, and yet she’s betrayed by a tear on her cheek. She still, even now, loves her. “I don’t want to dream of you anymore,” Regina manages to say even though her throat feels tight and the words leave her lips choked.

“You won’t. Not after you let me go.”

“What do you mean, let you _go_?”

“Your weakness, this love you have for a thief. What I would have felt or said, it doesn’t matter. You love him, and it’s not your downfall, my love.”

Regina simply stares, waiting to be told what is, waiting to be told what her shortcomings are.

“It’s your ability to believe everything is a sabotage by someone else. I did that to you, I suppose. Rumple and I both.”

“My entire life was a plan,” Regina breathes out, inhaling again deeply, tears clouding this vision of her mother who, though dead and a dream, still seems to radiate authority and command power.

“Robin was not. Neither was losing him. But you believed it before it ever happened.”

“And now he’s gone. I wasn’t wrong, I know what the grand scheme of my life is.”

Cora tsks, sighing as if she’s dealing with a young child. “And if I’d accepted my station in life? Let fate decide that I was to be a poor miller’s daughter for the rest of my days? You may loathe who I was and the things that I did, but oh, child, I didn’t let _fate_ tell me what I would be. I didn’t let anything stand in my way. What’s keeping you from doing the same? Fear? Of what? He already chose you.”

Regina doesn’t know. As she watches her dead mother watching her, Regina can’t for the life of her think of a reason why she wasn’t fighting with every part of herself to find a way to Robin. She’s spending day after day at that house, searching for clues to find a person to blame, a person she can force to write her a happy ending. She comes to her own realization at the same time Cora smiles knowingly.

“The book is just a book and you’re making choices. And I am proud of you. You’re more like me than you think. Though…”

“What, mother?” She’s not like her, she can’t be like her, not even a little. _But she is_.

“A thief, Regina? A common thief.”

“He’s a good man. A good father.”

Cora sighs once again, shaking her head. “You love him?”

“Yes.” It’s the first time Regina has said it with such affirmation, and she says it again. “I love him, mother.”

“Then don’t let the memory of the mistake I made stop you. Find a way to him.”

“You approve? My life and my love…”

“My heart loves you. And my dear, what I think should hardly matter now. Wake up, Regina.”

There’s a moment when she thinks she might reach out to hug her mother but then she’s gone, the room quiet and still until she blinks and finds herself awake in her bedroom, sitting up in bed slowly. It was a dream, but it was so incredibly real.

 _Find a way_.

Her mother’s voice echoes in her head and after glancing at the clock (five in the morning will have to do) she gets up, showers and dresses, and goes to Rumple’s abandoned shop, letting herself in. Checking that Belle isn’t there, Regina gets to work looking through books and parchment until, nearly three hours later, she finds something. Pulling a page out of a heavy tome she scans the yellowed with age paper, a slow smile relaxing her features as she reads the scripted words.

 _Perdidit Amor_.

The Spell to Return Lost Love.


End file.
